Samuel Johnson (review)

370 biography Vol. 2, No. 4 W. Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977. 646 pp. $19.95. One of the most renowned biographers, Samuel Johnson, always admired the literary form. "Biography," he wrote in 1759, "is, of the various kinds of narrative writing, that which is most eagerly read, and most easily applied to the purposes of life." His statement is especially relevant not only to the monumental eighteenth-century Life of Johnson by James Boswell but also to the recent Pulitzer Prizewinning biography by Walter Jackson Bate. Capitalizing on the discoveries of modern scholars and judiciously employing a Freudian perspective, Bate's Samuel Johnson concentrates on the complex workings of its subject's mind and contains a skillfully rounded portrait of one who was fascinating both as a man and an artist. Although there is no radical break with Boswell's heroic vision of the writer, Bate offers a far more extensive coverage of Johnson's early career and a more profoundly integrated case study of one whose courageous confrontation with life's harsh and mysterious realities is seen as an exemplary pilgrimage of hope for human nature. Samuel Johnson exhaustively penetrates the essence of Johnson's moral values and his perennial appeal and includes incisive literary criticism, helpful summaries of contemporary events and personages, attractive illustrations, and just enough footnotes to avoid clogging the compelling narrative. In the history of literary scholarship, this biography may well remain the representative twentieth-century interpretation of Johnson, which later generations will consult in order to assess the application of modern psychological principles to Johnson's achievement. One of Bate's most remarkable feats is to deduce from the scanty facts of Johnson's youth the origins of his lifelong inner turmoil and to tell the complete story of his formative years for the first time. Some insightful Freudian analysis, if occasionally difficult and distracting to follow, does help to describe and explain his divided personality. Driven by the demands of his own brilliant capabilities and by a tireless need for self-discipline, order, and meaning, he could succumb to periods of guilt, inner protest, and mental paralysis deriving from a constant conflict with his own passionate nature and from a resistance to accepting fully God's providential design for a universe so patently absurd, evil, and frustrating. That he refused to blame or envy others and stoutly accepted sole responsibility for overcoming his problems was testimony to his boundless honesty and Christian humility and to the noble resilience of his spirit. That he survived to win fame despite REVIEWS 371 grave psychological disabilities and disappointments at Lichfield, Oxford , and London, despite poverty, ugliness, one blind eye, and one deaf ear, goes far in explaining the gripping and inspiring quality of a life that Boswell made famous and Bate has reassessed so masterfully. The argument is persuasive that an important element in Johnson's mastery of self was his acquaintance with Cornelius Ford, Gilbert Walmesley, and Richard Bathurst, all of whom provided him with permanent role models of cultivated gentlemen of learning and wordly wisdom to help him shape a more harmonious personality. Bate perceptively and sympathetically chronicles the first major breakdown after Johnson's departure from Oxford and his gradual recovery largely through a May-December marriage with a forty-sixyear -old widow, Elizabeth Porter, whose courage and loyalty to her brilliant but destitute young husband are generously acknowledged. The respectful account of their affectionate relationship and of her eventual withdrawal into hypochondria and alcoholism should help to lay to rest sensational speculations about any supposed sexual aberrations on his part. His love endured, and, although his journalistic career in London engaged him in all kinds of miscellaneous writing and unleashed his peerless biographical skills, he felt consuming guilt for having dragged her into his Grub Street poverty. His enormous labors in assembling the first authoritative English dictionary from 1746 to 1755 marked a watershed in his attainment of lasting reputation , sufficient self-discipline to finish a long-term project, and an historically thorough knowledge of English literature important to his growing eminence as a literary critic. Bate is the first to relate these struggling years of...